once you go black ♪ ♪ you never go back [ cheers and applause ] >> jimmy: gin wigmore, "gravel and wine" it's out now. i want to thank naomi watts, i want to thank allison williams, i want to apologize to matt damon. we will probably have room for him tomorrow night. "nightline" is next. thank you for watching. good night. tonight on "nightline," inside the ultimate love scam. astonishing new revelations from the football star at the center of a shocking online hoax. >> put yourself in my situation. >> the deception and lies behind so called catfish scam. plastic wives. botox, lipo and much, much more. when you're married to hollywood's biggest plastic surgeons, no nip or tuck is off the table. and o say won't you sync? beyonce is taking heat for allegedly lip-synching the national anthem. but these stars definitely should have. but these stars definitely should have. our star spangled hall of shame. ...so as you can see, geico's customer satisfaction is at 97%. mmm, tasty. and cut! very good. people are always asking me how we make these geico adverts. so we're taking you behind the scenes. this coffee cup, for example, is computer animated. it's not real. geico's customer satisfaction is quite real though. this computer-animated coffee tastes dreadful. geico. 15 minutes could save you 15% or more on car insurance. someone get me a latte will ya, please? good evening. the notre dame football star who says he was the victim of the infamous online love hoax is coming forward with a story of deception so elaborate it sounds like something out of a rogue cia operation. in his first on camera interview since the scandal broke, manti te'o says his fake girlfriend would talk on the phone with his mom and text about bible verses with his dad. as abc's david wright reports, this is the kind of deceit that is par for the course in what's known as catfishing. >> reporter: today the college football star who says he was the victim of an elaborate internet dating scam spoke on camera for the first time since news of the hoax exploded. >> this girl who i committed myself to died on september 12th. now i get a phone call on december 6th saying that she's alive, and that i'm going to be put on national tv two days later to ask me the same question. what would you do? >> reporter: speaking exclusively to katie couric, te'o said that december phone call was from the woman with whom he'd had an online relationship for three years. te'o thought she was dead, but says she told him she was alive and was not who he thought she was. he says the call left him confused and embarrassed. so at the heisman trophy ceremony december 8th, two days after he learned the truth, he was still talking about lennay kekua as though she were real. >> i'll never forget the time when i found out that my girlfriend passed away, and the first person to run to my aid was my defensive coordinator. >> you stuck to the script, and you knew that something was amiss, manti. >> correct. >> why? >> well, anybody put yourself in my situation. katie, put yourself in my situation. >> reporter: it's kind of tough to do that. not only was the love of his life the figment of someone's imagination, but after she suddenly died at the start of last season, te'o became the sports writers' holy grail, a football hero who plays on, despite a tragic loss. >> she said if anything happens to me, you promise that you'll stay over there and that you'll play. and that you'll honor me through the way you play. >> reporter: this was movie of the week stuff. >> was this intoxicating in a way for you, manti? >> i think for me, the only thing i basked in was that i had an impact on people. that people turned to me and -- for inspiration. >> reporter: now instead of being an inspiration, he's a cautionary tale. the most infamous example of the internet phenomenon known as catfishing. >> the term catfishing was adopted to reflect the idea of bringing somebody in and establishing a false identity for bringing a person along as far as possible. >> reporter: it turns out it's more common than you think. >> he said all the perfect things. he was really sweet. started talking about the future and my dog playing like his dogs and things like that. so i had fallen for him. >> reporter: alex walters can relate to manti te'o. she met a man last thanksgiving on an online dating site. e-mails turned into texts, turned into phone calls. he said all the right things. >> he had a job, he had a house. everybody wants that fairytale ending, so we're going to grasp on to it if a guy is telling us how amazing we are and how pretty we are. so i think it's easy to fall for. >> reporter: while the relationship quickly became serious, that face-to-face meeting just never seemed to happen. >> we scheduled a date and the day of, i was getting ready and about an hour before, and he texted me and said he had the flu. >> reporter: the first of many broken dates. the excuses became more and more elaborate. >> he was t-boned by a drunk driver. ended up having a knee replacement. he had blood clots. he fell and had to go back to the hospital. the story unravels into a ton of different excuses and lies. >> reporter: walters started getting suspicious, so she googled his cell phone number. >> so this is the website i was directed to. >> reporter: personal stories from dozens of women, all of them duped by the same guy. >> so it was like this perfect guy died. he doesn't exist. poof, he's gone. >> reporter: turns out it may not be a guy at all. those photos he sent are of somebody else. >> that's the guy i thought i was talking to. >> reporter: who apparently had no clue his image was being used as the bait. walters says she now believes her catfish is a woman who lives in ohio who's been doing this to people for ten years. >> i really think the only thing she gets out of it is hurting people. >> reporter: that may be the biggest mistery. why would someone do this to somebody else, sometimes for years? in manti te'o's case, the alleged perpetrator is this man, ronaiah tuiasosopo, and his alleged accomplice. >> i don't think anybody knows specifically why somebody would choose to catfish someone. we can only hypothesize that it has to do with power and control. >> reporter: and unless there's a demand for money, it's not necessarily a crime. >> it is very unlikely anyone's going to end up behind bars as a result of this case. even if prosecutors decided to pursue this impersonation crime. which would be really tough. it's a misdemeanor. >> reporter: maybe not serious in the eyes of the laurk but plenty serious for manti te'o. te'o's father told katie couric he's heartbroken. >> i've known him 21 years of his life. and he's not a liar. he's a kid. >> reporter: a kid who's now reeling. >> what i went through was reel. the feelings, the pain, the sorrow. that was all real. >> reporter: except that it wasn't real. and that's the problem. i'm david wright for "nightline" in los angeles. >> thank you, david wright. a fascinating glimpse into living and loving in the digital age. of course, the poster child for the pearils of online romance hs been manti te'o. katie couric sat down with te'o and his parents for that exclusive interview and katie is with us now. you sat there with him and with his parents. did you get a sense that he was telling a credible story? >> well, i do think that his affection for this young woman was very real. i think the relationship was very real. i think that the pain he endured when he was told that she had died was very real. he played us voicemails and he listened to their conversations and it's of a boyfriend and a girlfriend, at least from her end. we looked at phone records, and yes, he stayed on the phone with her for hours upon hours while she was ostensibly in the hospital being treated for leukemia. he would keep the phone on at night and wake up, you know, with the phone at his ear in the morning, and they would -- it's strange, believe me. but i think it did happen. >> so assuming that he's telling the truth, the schemers here took this to an extraordinary level. so what is manti -- and what are his parents saying about the alleged schemers now? >> well, there's no question these people were master manipulators. i mean, the lengths they go are really shocking to the point where he hears a ventilator in the background when he's speaking to this so called girlfriend in the hospital. but they were actually, i thought, shockingly mag than mus towards this family. they expressed their concern for this 22-year-old boy who apparently perpetrated this house. so i was very surprised the see that, especially given the fact that his family, his parents were as sucked in his he was. >> katie, thank you. we will all be watchingñi when e full version airs on thursday's edition of "the katie show." and up next here on "nightline," from boob jobs to butt lifts and everything in between, the nipped and tucked wives of hollywood's biggest plastic surgeons. ♪ [ male announcer ] start with a groundbreaking car. good. then invent an entirely new way to buy one. no. no. no. yes! a website that works like a wedding registry. but for a car. first, you customize it. then let people sponsor the car's parts as gifts. dad sponsors the engine for your birthday. grandma sponsors the rims for graduation. the car gets funded. then you pick up your new dodge dart at the dealership. and all that's left to do is say thanks. easy. ♪ in the middle of the night it can be frustrating. it's hard to turn off and go back to sleep. intermezzo is the first and only prescription sleep aid approved for use as needed in the middle of the night when you can't get back to sleep. it's an effective sleep medicine you don't take before bedtime. take it in bed only when you need it and have at least four hours left for sleep. do not take intermezzo if you have had an allergic reaction to drugs containing zolpidem, such as ambien. allergic reactions such as shortness of breath or swelling of your tongue or throat may occur and may be fatal. intermezzo should not be taken if you have taken another sleep medicine at bedtime or in the middle of the night or drank alcohol that day. do not drive or operate machinery until at least 4 hours after taking intermezzo and you're fully awake. driving, eating, or engaging in other activities while not fully awake without remembering the event the next day have been reported. abnormal behaviors may include aggressiveness, agitation, hallucinations, or confusion. alcohol or taking other medicines that make you sleepy may increase these risks. in depressed patients, worsening of depression, including risk of suicide, may occur. intermezzo, like most sleep medicines, has some risk of dependency. common side effects are headache, nausea, and fatigue. so if you suffer from middle-of-the-night insomnia, ask your doctor about intermezzo and return to sleep again. ♪ there is an old expression about the cobbler's kids having no shoes, but that cannot be said for the wives of hollywood's top plastic surgeons. in a town where there is a medical intervention for every sag and every wrinkle, the women married to the surgeons wielding the knives have easy access to the operating room, and abc's cecilia vega shows us the results. >> reporter: here in the land of that famous hollywood zip code lives a group of wives. they are called the plastic wives. married to some of the most successful surgeons in beverly hills. and they get all the perks that come with it. breast augmentation. who's had their breasts done? >> i have. four times. >> reporter: botox, love it or hate it? >> love. >> who's had lipo? >> from here to here. [ laughter ] >> reporter: but no amount of botox can ward off aging and the pressure to stay perfect. just ask dayna devon, a former entertainment news anchor and wife to dr. brent mullican. >> in any other community in the world, this makes no sense. but it's hollywood. i wanted to continue working in television. you hit 40, you want to continue working in tv, there's some things you gotta think about. >> reporter: so she asked her husband to think, with everything from injections to nips and tucks. >> i wasn't ready to hang it up yet. i wanted to extend my shelf life a little bit. >> and when you look in the mirror now? >> i'm happy now. don't get me wrong, i'll still obsess about an acne scar or something, but i think most women do find things they obsess about. >> reporter: the other members of this tight knit club, meet veronica. >> my husband is dr. david matlock. he's the vagina man. >> reporter: alana. >> i always see him in surgery doing people's teeth. i'm always like babe, just please do my teeth. >> reporter: and francis. >> from here, i did my hair. >> reporter: they're proud of the work they've had and quick to judge the with of otherings. >> if we don't like them, we don't hang out with their wives. >> reporter: for them, no appointment is necessary. no payment required. they have unlimited access to the operating room, whatever they want whenever they want it. even a personal procedure room right at home for a little or tuck when the mood strikes. they are living billboards for their husband's steady hands. >> i heard some advice a long time ago that if you're considering a plastic surgeon, look at his wife. and that's a perfect example of the kind of work he most likely does. >> reporter: and their new show "plastic wives" on tlc leaves little to the imagination about what life in and out of the operating room is really like. are you ready for the public reaction? i'm going to tell you right now, people are going to say you look overdone. >> we're not telling anybody they have to go do this. i'm all about -- look, here's what i did. here's the information. take it or leave it. if you like it, great. if you don't, great. no worries. >> reporter: their husbands may try to say stop, but they always seem to lose the battle. >> one way to get exactly what i like, is don't worry about it. i'll go to doctor so and so. that's the plastic surgeon wife's threat. don't worry, i'm going to go see so and so. and he'll be like oh no you don't. >> we have a culture that tries to fix every flaw. to me that's unhealthy. >> reporter: though plastic surgery is a $10 billion a year industry in america, this doctor says "plastic wives" sends the wrong message. >> it's our job to say no, you look abnormal, you cannot have more. you have to hold that patient back. for purely selfish reasons, i don't want a patient with giant lips sitting in my waiting area showing my other patients this is what i do. >> reporter: she often spends her days correcting surgeries that she says have gone too far. working on patients like jillian weisburg. >> at one point, i went to another plastic surgeon and she injected an entire is a ring of juvederm into my lips. when i opened the door, they'd laugh out loud at my face. it looked ridiculous. >> when people come in and they're overdone, i say to them, i'm sorry, you're looking too beverly hills. and that's when you stop. >> reporter: but some plastic wives simply can't stop. is anyone in this group addicted to plastic surgery? >> i am, kind of addicted. i go there every day to the clinic. there is so many things coming, so many new technologies, new implants, new botox, laser procedures, and all that, and i want it all. >> reporter: francis thought she had it all during her seven-year marriage to dr. ryan stanton. that is, until, she says he left her. they're still friends and they run his plastic surgery business together. >> he had the midlife crisis and wants to be with younger women half of my age. so he left me because of that. >> reporter: so he left you for a younger woman. >> yeah, he did. i have everything done to keep myself young. i couldn't keep the man. he left. >> reporter: dr. and mrs. plastic surgeon. their lives just like their faces are glamorous, scar-free, and flawless. or are they? >> they are calling us plastic wives. yeah, we do a lot of plastic surgery. but we don't look overdone. >> reporter: they are images of plastic perfection. for "nightline," i'm cecilia vega in los angeles. >> the special plastic wives airs on tlc this sunday, january 27th. you can see more on "gma" tomorrow morning. coming up, as the world debates whether beyonce was actually lip-synching the national anthem, our list of the stars from steven tyler to michael bolton who really should have been lip-synching. whose rendition is the worst of all time? 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